


i got soul, but i'm not a soldier

by congratsyouvegrownasoul



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Blind Character, Canon Disabled Character, Developing Friendships, Disability Fest, Episode: s03e13 The Firebending Masters, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 06:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15551811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/congratsyouvegrownasoul/pseuds/congratsyouvegrownasoul
Summary: Toph and Zuko talk about senses, power, bending, and a little bit of their past.





	i got soul, but i'm not a soldier

Toph loves the Western Air Temple, with its tangled warren of passageways carved into the rock, layer upon layer of hidden caverns piled up under her feet, waiting for her to explore. It reminds her of the caves where she used to wander with the badger moles when she was younger. She can’t sense anything within the gorge itself—just a deep void of air, and the vague sense of the bottom of the valley far beneath. A few months ago, this might have distressed her. But she’s begun to learn how to deal with uncertainties in the time she’s been traveling with her new friends. The first time she’d ridden Appa, the loss of her lifeline to the earth had been wrenching—made her feel so exposed, so vulnerable. Now, while she’ll probably never love flying, it doesn’t make her feel queasy inside anymore. After all, before she’d learned Earthbending, she hadn’t been able to see with her feet either. She hadn’t been fragile then, despite what her parents said, and she isn’t now. Besides, she has friends, to tell her about the things she can neither see nor feel.

So, she doesn’t have to worry about enemies swarming down into the gorge without her knowledge, because someone will tell her, and then she’ll be ready. And sure enough, when Appa flies down in front of the temple, bringing Aang and Zuko back from their trip to find any last remnants of the sun warriors, Katara calls out to Toph. Even though she can’t see them in the air, even before she feels the vibration of Appa slamming his big paws down on the rock of the temple floor—Katara makes sure Toph knows their other friends are coming.

And when Aang slides off Appa’s back, Toph can feel the spring in his step and knows, even before he starts chattering about dragons, that their journey has been successful.

Aang talks and talks all through the dinner that Katara prepared, and he and Zuko show off their new, improved skills. Toph hears from the others that the fire is more colorful, but she can feel herself the greater heat and force of it, pouring out of the boys’ hands and making the air around them crackle with energy. Before they left, she could hardly feel the heat of the little puffs of flame Zuko had produced at all. Toph feels a thrill of pride, because it was her idea, her memories, that sparked all of this.

After dinner, Aang and Sokka are doing the dishes and Katara’s cuddling Appa, getting reacquainted. Toph can sense Zuko, at the edge of the canyon, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge. He’s been quieter than Aang during the hours since their return—keeping up an almost awed silence. Toph still hasn’t gotten the measure of Zuko yet—she hadn’t been part of the group in the old days when he’d hunted Aang and her other friends down and terrified them, so she’d been much more open to him at first, but the incident where he’d burned her feet had scared her. Now that it’s been a few days and the swelling has gone down, she can walk again, and see with her feet again to some extent. She understands it was an accident, and she’s trying not to hold it against him, but she understands why the others were wary of him at first, and why Katara still is. Firebending is dangerous, regardless of who’s wielding it.

But she’s intrigued to hear about the dragons from someone who grew up with the traditions of the Fire Nation and of firebenders, so she cautiously heads closer to Zuko and the edge of the gorge, squatting beside him.

“Hi, Zuko.”

“Hi, Toph,” he says, swinging his legs against the wall of the canyon.

“So,” Toph says, a little awkwardly. “How were the dragons?”

 “Thank you for bringing up the badger moles earlier,” Zuko says earnestly. “I know what you meant now.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. You said earthbending is about sensing the world around you—about _being_ part of the world around, being at one with everything. It’s not just about throwing rocks at people. I guess—I hadn’t really realized that fire is part of life too, part of the world. It’s so easy to just think of it as a weapon.”

He sighs heavily.

“I guess, I already knew it could be for other things—like when I heated up my breath to keep myself warm at the North Pole. Like there was fire inside of me. But mostly I just thought about it like it was something that could hurt other people—so if I didn’t want to hurt anyone, it was hard to get my bending to work. I don’t really want to fight for the sake of fighting, you know?”

Toph laughs a bit.

“I might not be the best person to talk to about that. You know I used to do competitive Earth Rumble, right?”

She had expected Zuko to laugh too, but he doesn’t.

“Yeah, I guess you think differently about that. But you and your friend the Boulder—you got up and went home safe at the end of the day, every day. An Agni Kai is different.”

If she reached out and touched him right now, Toph imagines she could feel the muscles in Zuko’s back and shoulders, all tight and tense. She doesn’t, though. She can hear the strain in his voice well enough.

She chooses her words carefully—something that’s hard for her. It’s easier to just blurt things out when they come to her, but sometimes people get hurt that way.

“I like martial arts because everyone told me I was weak, and it was the only way I could show I wasn’t. It made me feel more powerful. But with you—people tell you you’re supposed to hurt other people, and you want to show you don’t need to. That can be powerful too.”

Zuko, like Toph, is running away from everything he grew up with. That, she can understand, even if what they’re running from is different.

At her words, she hears a sharp intake of breath. There’s a long pause.

“Thank you, Toph.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Toph?”

“Yeah?”

“When you bend earth—or even just when you use your feet to feel the rock, can you feel the different types of rock? Like layers?”

“Yeah. This canyon, this is layers and layers of rock left by floods, and then the river carved down through it to make the gorge. But if we were on a volcano, the rock is all different. And if we were on soil—I can feel the worms threading through it, and the places where the worms used to be and the ground is all chewed up and spat out. Like tunnels. Why?”

“I guess—whenever I’ve bended fire before, it’s all been the same fire. And Azula’s fire is different because it’s blue, and because it’s Azula’s, and Iroh’s is different, and my—my father’s. But today—the dragons made all types, all colors, all at once. And you can’t see colors, so I wanted to know if there was anything you could feel that was the same. Because it’s not just colors—it’s feelings. Katara or Sokka, they could see the differences, but they couldn’t feel it—‘cause they’re not firebenders. Just like I can’t do what you do.”

Toph grins at him.

“What’s the firebending equivalent of spotting a worm?”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr's Disabilityfest 2018! Two of my favorite ATLA characters, but two that I've never written together. I wanted to discuss Toph's blindness and how it relates to her bending, and also talk about some of the parallels and differences between Zuko and Toph's respective upbringings. Hope you all enjoyed!


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